Welcome to Calm History And if you'd prefer to hear this episode and over 90 more episodes of Calm History, including many that are over an hour, but without any ads, commercials, sponsors, promos, or breaks. then just become a Silk Plus member by using the link in the episode notes. It's free for a limited time. Or, you can just lean back, put up your feet, and enjoy this episode. Today's episode is about the Loch Ness Monster.
I'm going to go through almost every piece of major evidence since the 7th century that may support the existence of this strange being. And don't think that this episode will sound like some boring courtroom transcript. You're going to hear some stories about the Loch Ness Monster that will shock you, amaze you, and amuse you. I was honestly surprised at how interesting the history of the Loch Ness Monster was.
Now, what you'll hear today will not fully prove the existence of the Loch Ness Monster. and neither will it fully disprove the existence of this creature. You get to listen and make up your own mind. Now, I know you're wondering, Harris, where do you stand on this hot topic? Some of the evidence in this episode gives me hope that the Loch Ness Monster exists. And as you'll hear, several pieces of historical evidence were later revealed to be pure hoaxes.
So, I'm also a little bit doubtful. Feel free to call me a waffle and pour some syrup on me. I'm just undecided. There may just be a simple reason why the creature is so hard to photograph. Maybe the poor thing has social anxiety. I also would rather hang out at the bottom of a lake by myself than have to pose for 300 photos a day with hordes of yappy tourists. And can you imagine the same dumb questions that you would be asked day after day? What do you eat?
Do you have friends? Will you dance in my TikTok video so I can get more subscribers? Anyway, if you're someone who doesn't enjoy chit-chatting around a table of cheese cubes at social functions, then, yeah, you get my point. I hope this episode distracts and relaxes your overactive brain squirrels. The Loch Ness Monster. Hope vs. Hoax. Let's begin by breaking down the words, Loch Ness Monster.
Loch is the Scottish Gaelic word for a lake or for a sea inlet. This, of course, means that the Loch Ness Monster lives in a lake. Which lake? Or, to be more proper, which lake? The monster lives in Loch Ness, which is a large, deep, freshwater lake in Scotland. Now just a warning. Make sure you never say that the monster lives in Loch Ness Lake. Because that is the same as saying the monster lives in Lake Ness Lake. Yeah, that there is mouth garbage.
And of course, this is why the creature is also called Nessie. It's just a fun derivative of Ness from Loch Ness. I kind of prefer the term Nessie because it makes this creature sound more endearing than the term Loch Ness Monster. The term monster just seems a bit extreme. Maybe it's just a shy creature who is introverted and has social anxiety. Yeah, I get that. I wouldn't want people calling me a monster just because I get twitchy at social gatherings.
But I'll keep calling it a monster in this episode because your brain squirrels probably find this term more exciting and dramatic. When was the first sighting of this monster? The first report was in a document that was written around 640 A.D. The document was written by clergymen about the life of a saint. In this document, it described how the saint encountered some local residents burying a man. The saint asked the obvious question, so what exactly happened to this dude?
The locals explain that the man was swimming in some nearby water when he was attacked by a water beast. This beast had mauled the man and dragged him underwater despite their attempts to rescue him. The saint said something like, Don't worry, I'll take care of this beast. Then the saint told one of his followers to get into the water where the beast was. Now, don't judge. This is no different than Taylor Swift asking someone in her entourage to stand in line for her at Starbucks.
Actually, yeah, it is quite different. You probably wouldn't get mauled at Starbucks by a ginormous sea monster. Anyway, the follower gets into the water, and sure enough, the beast rushes towards him. But the saint raises his pinky and says to the beast, Go no further. Do not touch the man. Go back at once. Yep, those are the actual words from the saint in the 640 AD document.
Of course, the creature immediately stopped and then fled. A great miracle by this saint was then logged into the history book. Okay, a couple of important facts to be added here. First off, these types of biographies about saints from this time were known for making exaggerations. Not only that, but wild stories about water beasts were also pretty common in these biographies. And here is another problem. The water beast in this story was an in-locked nest.
Instead, the reported beast was in a nearby river. So why is this the first potential report of the Loch Ness Monster? Because the name of the river was River Ness, which, guess what, connects this sea to Loch Ness, the lake. So the creature could have coexisted in the river and the lake because they're connected. So this story also explains how a giant sea creature ended up living in a lake. It may have started in the sea and then got into Loch Ness by swimming up the river Ness.
This ancient story would also mean that the creature is about 1,600 years old. Yeah, don't dwell on that. Time for a quick break. If you feel tired and groggy during the day, then you may have sleep apnea. It's a condition that results in poor sleep for many people, including my father. It basically means he has disrupted breathing while sleeping, but not anymore because he bought a CPAP machine to improve his breathing. He loves it so much that he now won't go to bed or travel without it.
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To hear over 90 more episodes of Calm History, but without any breaks like this one, just become a Silk Plus member by using the link in the episode notes. It's free for a limited time. Alright, back to the episode. Let's jump forward to more recent sightings. In 1872, a local man saw an object resembling a log or an upturned boat, wriggling and churning up the water. He described it as moving slowly at first before disappearing at a faster speed.
In 1888, another local man sighted a large, stubby-legged animal surfacing from the lake. and propelling itself near the shore where the man stood. He described the creature as looking like a large salamander. But many supporters of the Loch Ness Monster don't really lean heavily on these older reports. Instead, many believe that the most legitimate and defendable sightings started in 1933.
It is in May of 1933 that the creature is referred to as a monster in a local newspaper for the first time. But the full-term Loch Ness Monster was not commonly used yet. On August 4, 1933, the same newspaper published a report that several weeks earlier, a man who was with his wife saw the creature. He described it as a dragon or prehistoric animal that was walking without limbs across the road toward the lake with an animal in its mouth.
This was basically the first person to ever describe the creature as an ancient plesiosaur. which is a dinosaur that sort of looks like a brontosaurus with flippers, if that helps. There was just one strange coincidence. This was the same year that the first King Kong movie debuted in movie theaters. And guess what was in that movie? Yeah, a giant plesiosaur. Make of that what you will.
Soon after the published report about a water dinosaur in Loch Ness, there were related letters that began to appear in the newspaper. These letters were often anonymous, but they were claiming many more land or water sightings around the lake. These accounts reach the media, which describe the creature as a monster fish, a sea serpent, or a dragon. But by the end of 1933, the media had settled on one term. And sure enough, it was the Loch Ness Monster.
So, when was the first photograph of this monster? It was taken in November of 1933 and published by a local newspaper in December of that same year. It was a blurry photo that many people thought showed a monster poking its long neck out of the water. The Secretary of State for Scotland soon ordered police to prevent any attacks on it. The original negative of the photo was later found in 1963 and analyzed.
It was determined that it was a photo of an otter rolling around on the surface of the water. So basically, back in 1933, the Secretary of State of Scotland was basically preventing any attacks on otters. Good on him. Otters are absolutely adorable. But let's get back to 1934. This is the year that the most famous photo of the monster was published. It is the image that you've probably seen many times. the black silhouette of a long neck and a small head poking out of the water.
You can even see waves rippling away from the body, which suggests it is moving. It was taken by a man from London who was visiting Scotland in 1934. This man was a general surgeon who didn't want his real name associated with the photo. So the photo was dubbed the surgeon's photo. The famous photo was published in the Daily Mail newspaper on April 21, 1934.
According to the man who submitted the photo to the Daily Mail newspaper, He was just gazing at the lake when the monster appeared, and he just took a photo. For 60 years, a cropped version of the photo was considered powerful evidence of the monster's existence. until 1993, when the makers of a documentary about the Loch Ness Monster analyzed an uncropped version of the photo. They determined that this strange object creating the ripples was probably being pulled or propelled by something.
and also that this strange object was only about two or three feet long. it would turn out that they were correct. A few years later, in 1999, a new book revealed the photo to be a hope. The book was titled, Nessie, The Surgeon's Photograph Exposed. It revealed the complicated story that led up to the fake photograph. And it all began way back in 1933 with the newspaper the London Daily Mail.
The editors of the Daily Mail knew that the Loch Ness Monster was big news, and they wanted a fresh story about it. So they hired Duke Wetherill, a big game hunter, to go to the lake and try to track the monster. Duke Wetherill accepted the challenge in December of 1933. He soon packed his bags, traveled to Scotland, and unleashed his big game hunting skills. After only a few days, weather were reported finding fresh footprints along the shore of the lake.
He believed the large four-toed footprint. belonged to a very powerful, soft-footed animal about 20 feet or 6 meters long. with great excitement. Wetherill made plaster casts of the footprints and just before Christmas sent them off to the Natural History Museum in London for analysis. Zoologists at the Natural History Museum analyzed the footprints and came to four conclusions. Number one, the footprints match the foot of a hippopotamus. Number two, each footprint was exactly the same.
The footprints were probably made with a single stuffed hippopotamus foot, which were commercially available as the base of umbrella stands and even ashtrays. In their fourth conclusion, in case you don't see this one coming, the footprints were a hoax. It is unclear if Wetherill was duped by someone else who made the fake footprints, or perhaps the big game hunter did it himself. You know, to further raise his status as a chest-thumping big game hunter.
Regardless, the editors at the Daily Mail were not amused, and they expressed their dismay to Wetherill. The disgraced Wetherill returned to London with one thought on his mind. Vengeance. His new hoax idea would be so good that the Daily Mail would gobble it up like a sea monster eating a worm. Duke Wetherill recruited his son Ian and his stepson Christian to help him.
His stepson just happened to be a sculpture specialist, so he constructed a long neck and a small head out of layers of plastic and wood. In the meantime, his son went to Woolworths in a suburb of London and bought a wind-up toy submarine. Once the neck and head were ready, they were mounted to the top of the toy submarine. To make sure the submarine sat below the waterline, they added some lead weights to it.
Within the span of eight days, they had completed their twelve-inch-tall, fake Loch Ness Monster. Wetherill and his son then drove up to the lake and scouted out an ideal location. They found an inlet where tiny ripples would look like full-size waves. Finally, they wound up the toy submarine, placed it in the lake, and took some photos of it as it moved through the water. Now, all they needed was some credible person to get the photos developed and to submit them to the Daily Mail.
Through a mutual friend, they recruited Dr. Robert Wilson. Yep, the surgeon. Dr. Wilson apparently went along with the hoax because he enjoyed a good practical joke. Without the slightest inkling, it would be so successful. That surgeon's photo, published in 1934, provided convincing evidence of the monster. Well, until it was revealed to be a hoax many decades later. So, who did reveal and confirm all the details of this hoax?
It was Duke Wetherill's stepson, the one who sculpted the neck and head of the fake creature. In 1993, at the age of 90 years old, He shared all the details which were then published in that 1994 book, All About the Hope. Time for a quick break. Are you looking to improve your Italian beyond the beginner level? If so, then you should try the new podcast, We Learn Italian Step by Step. This story-based podcast includes engaging narratives, guided practice, and interactive exercises.
...or... feel free to click the link in the episode note. To hear over 90 more episodes of Calm History, but without any breaks like this one, just become a Silk Plus member by using the link in the episode note. It's free for a limited time. Alright, back to the episode. Let's return to 1934 to see how the search for the Loch Ness Monster escalated even more after the famous surgeon's photo. That photo made even more people eager to see or somehow document this amazing and elusive monster.
In 1934, a man named Edward Mountain financed a large-scale search. He paid 20 men with binoculars and cameras to sit around the lake for five weeks, watching for the creature to poke its head out. Of all the photos that were taken, none of them were considered conclusive. And there was one video that was taken that had a lot of hopes put on it. But several scientists of natural history concluded the video showed a seal.
In 1938, a tourist filmed a moving object on Loch Ness and thought it might be the monster. The color video was obtained by a writer for Popular Science, and he determined that it was not an animal, but just some floating object. In 1954, a sonar reading from a fishing boat showed a large object underwater was keeping pace with their vessel. It was never really determined what the object was. In 1955, a man took a photo that showed two long black humps in the water.
Many researchers were skeptical, and one person said it could easily be a wave effect resulting from three boats traveling closely together up the lot. When a book author asked the photographer for the original negative, he noticed that what he received didn't exactly match the prior photo. It appeared the negative had been altered. Insert ominous music. In 1960, an aeronautical engineer filmed what he believed to be a dark hump that left a wake as it moved across the lake.
The film was analyzed 33 years later by Discovery Communications as part of a documentary. A person from that documentary team who enhanced the film saw something interesting. By enhancing and overlaying frames, he found what appeared to be the rear body of a creature underwater. As a result, he stated, Before I saw the film, I thought the Loch Ness Monster was a load of rubbish. Having done the enhancement, I'm not so sure.
Others who analyzed the film thought the image in the video could just be a boat moving across the water. The next big investigation was started in 1962, and it lasted several years. It was done by the Loch Ness Phenomena Investigation Bureau. It was mainly a group of self-funded volunteers who watched the lake using film cameras with telescopic lenses. It seems they didn't find anything conclusive. The next big investigation was in 1967.
It was led by the chair of the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Birmingham. He used a prototype sonar device to create an acoustic net that would record any large moving object. He documented several targets, including one that was probably a school of fish. But some other targets moved quite strangely and quickly, and they could not be explained by any known wildlife. The next big investigation was started in 1972, and this one ran for several decades.
It involved a group of researchers from the Academy of Applied Sciences and it was led by Robert Rines. Similar to the prior big study, this team also used sonar to examine the lake. But this team added a submersible camera with a floodlight. If the sonar detected anything strange, then the camera would take pictures. On August 8, 1972, their cameras captured a famous image that would become to be known as the Flipper Photograph.
It appeared to show a large flipper or a highly flexible laterally flattened tail. The apparent flipper was even photographed in different positions, indicating movement. Other interpretations of the photo included two animals swimming together, the bottom of the lake. some air bubbles, a rock, or a fish fin. One team member even determined that the original photos were retouched to make them look a bit more like a flipper. Although, no one knows how the original photos got altered.
Regardless, the flipper photo convinced a British naturalist in 1975 to give the creature a scientific name. He claimed that he wanted the animal added to the British Register of Protected Wildlife. The name he chose was Nessy Terras Romboteric. which is Greek for nes monster with diamond-shaped fin. The British naturalist who created this name was Sir Peter Scott, or you can call him Sir Peter S. Because, get this amazing revelation.
Soon after the Greek name was announced, a Scottish politician discovered that the letters of the Greek name could be rearranged into a sentence. Nesoteris rhomboterics was an anagram for Monster Hoax by Sir Peter F. Wow. Truth is stranger than fiction. Anyways, the sonar team continued their work over the subsequent years. They captured additional photos and videos that included two large lumpy objects underwater that looked like two plesiosaur-like animals.
a v-shaped wake moving on the surface of the lake on a calm day, and the apparent carcass of a large animal on the floor of the lake. For the years leading up to 2008, the team failed to find any further evidence. That same year, the leader of the sonar team theorized that the creature may have become extinct due to rising temperatures from climate change. Alright, let's move on to some other investigations that analyze the Lycra activity.
Another team of researchers began a large investigation in 1987. They called it Operation Deep Scan, and they utilized 24 boats equipped with echo sounder equipment. The boats were deployed across the width of the lake and they sent simultaneous acoustic waves. Analysis of the images showed some interesting large objects with motion, but it may have just been seals or some debris. Another image seemed to show a large, single object that was moving deep underwater.
A sonar expert from the team stated, There's something here that we don't understand. And there's something here that's larger than a fish. Maybe some species that hasn't been detected before. I don't know. The image was definitely curious, but also inconclusive. In 2003, the BBC sponsored a search using 600 sonar beams and satellite tracking. No animal of any substantial size was found. The scientists involved concluded that the Loch Ness Monster was probably a myth.
In 2007, a lab technician videotaped a jet black thing with a length of 46 feet or 14 meters. moving fairly fast in the water. A marine biologist analyzed the footage and said it was the best footage he had ever seen. Although, he later suggested that the footage was an otter, a seal, or some water bird. Yeah, give that man some maple syrup to obviously go with his big waffle.
In 2011, a boat captain captured a sonar image of a large object that seemed to follow his boat underwater for two minutes. He ruled out the possibility of a small fish or a seal. It turned out he was right. Because a year later, a scientist said it was a bloom of algae or zooplankton. Crikey. Scientists just seem to take the fun out of everything. Another boat captain in 2011 also claimed to have captured a photo of the Loch Ness Monster.
Keep this in mind, though. The name of his boat was Nessie Hunter 4, and he made money by taking tourists for rides on the lake. Two years later, he confessed his photo was a hoax. It's unfortunate. These hoaxers just muddy the water for potentially real photos. Yeah, I still have hope.
In 2013, a tourist took a video of a solid black object moving under the surface of the water. He further stated, The water was very still at the time, and there were no ripples coming off the wave and no other activity on the water. Some skeptics suggested that the wave may have been caused by a wind gust. Did these skeptics not listen to the guy? He said the water was very still. You all got potatoes in your ears?
The next year, in 2014, it was noticed that a satellite image on Apple Maps showed something curious. There appeared to be a large creature just below the surface of Loch Ness. Possible explanations were the wake of a boat, the ripples of a seal, or some floating wood. No conclusion could be determined. And the most recent large-scale investigation occurred a few months ago in 2023. The investigation was a partnership between the Loch Ness Center and the research team, Loch Ness Exploration.
Their surveying equipment included thermal drones to detect heat patterns and hydrophones to detect acoustic signals. The search leader shared this announcement about the acoustic testing. We heard four distinctive gloops. We all got a bit excited, so we ran to make sure the recorder was on, but we discovered it wasn't plugged in. Hundreds of volunteers from around the world also participated in this two-day hunt.
From the shoreline and from boats on the lake, they took photos and videos of any suspicious activity. Overall, no conclusive evidence of the famous beast has yet been found from this recent study. But the project leader is still going through all the recordings from their technical equipment and from the volunteers. So stay tuned for some potential big discoveries or just a lot of blurry images. Yeah, time will tell. This is the end of the episode.
If you want to hear over 90 more episodes of Calm History, including many that are over an hour, but without any ads, promos, or breaks. then just become a Silk Plus member by using the link in the episode notes. It's free for a limited time.